


Imagine

by Olorisstra



Series: Hydrospanner in the works [6]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Hell I rarely even read second person pov, I don't feel about Mad the way Mad feels about himself, I dunno what it is with this one, I never write second person POV, I wanna beat the Kaminoans up, I want to hug him and take him away from Kamino, Twenty-Eight might want to do the same, also rated M because of Kaminoans clone-rearing practices, and like this it's gonna stay, and training meant to push a Force User towards the Dark Side deliberately, he just hasn't told Mad yet, there is a bit of gore towards the end, this fic just came out of me like this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 14:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7055686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olorisstra/pseuds/Olorisstra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Other Side Project</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imagine

Imagine.

* * *

You are born with an instinctive sense of the currents of the world around you.

You cannot see or smell yet but you feel safe and warm. 

You know that there are others like you somewhere near. You can feel them and they are a comfort to your mind. You can’t reach each other yet but you might be able to, soon.

There are also others, out there, who feel colder and far away. They move with purpose around you and those like you (your them). 

You can feel their interest in you, but it’s a strange sort of attention that you receive, one that doesn’t feel to be for you at all. One that leaves you with a crawling sense of unease and uncertainty.

One day, you and some of the others are taken away, further and further away from the rest of those like you. You are unable to stop them and for all that you try to reach out and grab on someone, on something, you find that you are not as strong as you need. That the understanding you have just isn’t enough.

They keep moving you and the others with you until you can’t feel the them left behind anymore.

You are more alone than you were before, but not fully alone. There are still some of the others with you and you reach out, clinging to them just as much as they cling to you. They are scared, like you are, and they don’t know what’s happening, like you don’t. There is comfort in not being the only one feeling that way, in still having some of them with you.

* * *

The ones outside don’t let it last.

* * *

You are brought outside of the warmth, in a place where you are not wrapped into something immaterial but bound to stay on something hard.

It leaves you shivering, your breathing hard and your feet starting to hurt fast, until they slip something on them. It almost makes you kick, only refraining from it because the others need you to refrain, lest you be taken away from them. You don’t like what they put on you. It is rough and it rubs on the parts of you that are covered, in ways that hurt. You strongly dislike it.

Those who did this to you and to the others are huge and cold and strange and you strongly dislike them too. They make sounds that have no meaning to you and they feel like they are pleased with your discomfort and dislike. You dislike them all the more for it.

You are brought to a very bright place, with the others. Unlike the big things, the others are your height and they all look the same. From what you feel from them, you must look the same. They feel scared, far more scared than you feel, and they cling to you, all of them, making you the center of the little group.

The big things have flat things they draw their long limbs on, again and again, watching all of you and how you act. You feel that they care about something, but it’s not about you or what you do so much as it is about other things you cannot understand. 

_You_ don’t matter. What you _do_ does. 

You dislike them for that too, though not as much as the rest of it.

Your anger grows.

* * *

They make you sit and they put things on your head and those things make your head hurt because they fill it with things you didn’t have before. They make you learn, but it is a painful learning, and you can hear the others whimper. When you try to reach for them the ones who are doing this to you bind you.

You would hit them for it, but you are too tightly trapped.

Blindly, you reach out with your mind and smack them for it anyway, hit them again and again to push them back and away, calling the others to you and promising that you will share what you learn, that they can take off the things on their head.

They do and you share with them, making them learn without pain, putting a wall between the ones doing this to you and you four.

(You know now that the number for you is one and the number for the others is three and that the sum, because to count all of you together is called making a sum, makes four.)

It’s tiring. Not so much the sharing, the other three help you with that, but the wall, especially when the big ones, the Kaminoans you know now, try to break it down with their tools.

It makes you angry that they try at all and that makes it less tiring to make the wall strong. It’s a revelation, one that makes you feel stronger and bigger than you were before, filled with a deep, _good_ sense of this being right.

 _Finally_ , you have found something you can use.

And you have an anger that feels like it will never end, made stronger by just looking at them.

* * *

They get you when your body gets too tired to stay awake.

* * *

When you awake the next time there are many more new things in your head and you have been cut off from everything, left alone and helpless.

There are bands around your feet and throat that keep you from feeling the currents of the world or the others, even though you can see them just on the other side of a semi-transparent wall.

You throw your mind at it and it does nothing.

You throw yourself at it and it hurts you but doesn’t break it down.

When you scream, the bands grow hot around your neck and wrists, and when you stop screaming they take time to cool down.

You feel _hate_.

* * *

The Kaminoans are happy with your anger, with your hate. 

They are unhappy that you feel it for them. 

The one called Taun We sits down in front of you and explains to you that they are not doing this to be cruel, but that it is necessary.

They need you to be strong in what they call the Dark Side, because they need you to teach the ones they call ‘trooper clones’ how it feels to be near someone who uses it and that it is a bad thing to feel. 

They need you to be the bad one, to be hurt and angry and hard.

“I need my others.” You tell her, because you can do this --

(You are so angry that you can’t imagine ever stop being it).

\-- but you don’t want the others to do it too. “I can show them the things that hurt, without making it hurt. I can be bad for you, but I want to be good for them.”

You will be the bad one, if they are well and safe.

“You will have to be very bad, when we tell and how we tell you, for us to be satisfied with only you.” Taun We informs you. You can’t see if she’s interested or not, but you think she might be.

“I will be very bad, when you tell me and how you tell me.” You promise, showing her your teeth. It would not be a problem. You _like_ being what they call 'bad’.

You think she seems pleased with you.

* * *

They teach you that your designation is CL-OWK-30 and that the others are CL-OWK-27, CL-OWK-28 and CL-OWK29. The others tell you to call them Clone, Twenty-Eight and Twine, as they have chosen to think of themselves.

You think that what you think of yourself is that you are angry, so you tell them to call you Mad. 

It’s what you feel like.

* * *

The others are given things to read, about the world outside and what is being done here, and they share it with you.

Clone learns the fastest and he likes being given new datapads the most. Twine would like if they let him take the datapads apart and he soaks up on everything mechanical the best, bent as he is on figuring how the droids works and how to make them do what _they_ want. Twenty-Eight keeps going back over on the stuff about the Jedi and the Force, because he’s the best of them at doing the fine control stuff.

They don’t let him practice, but he’s good at finding way around that and you help him when he feels like he’s faltering, letting him piggyback on your mind during many of your training lessons so that he can learn too.

You get hurt, a lot and in a lot of different ways but never by the Kaminoans personally. They have machines who do it for them and you come to recognize and dread their presence at first, then to hate them outright as time wears on.

They don’t show the others when they hurt you, and one of the first thing to learn is how to keep them out of your mind too, but you are told that if the others ever got themselves accidentally hurt, the Kaminoans would make sure to show you, because it didn’t take long for them to understand that the others being hurt makes you angrier.

The Kaminoans were always fast on the uptake.

* * *

The clothes you wear are designed to be uncomfortable and you are made to do hard things and given no recognition for it. It’s on purpose and you know it’s on purpose, but that doesn’t make you try any less, just like it doesn’t stop your want for them to admit that you are good at what they make you do.

They have you train from when they wake you up to when you are allowed to drag yourself back in the big bed you and the others share.

They bring someone in to teach you how to fire weapons, someone else to show you the finer points of using a sword. They make you build walls, lift objects, push things away or call them to you. They put droids in front of you and have you work out how to get faster and avoid getting hit by their shots and then how to make them short out, from close or from far away.

You could do it on your own, but they tell you to do it with rage and it becomes easier and easier to do it their way, instead of the way Twenty-Eight uses. You still greatly dislike them and you dislike the droid they put in front of you, the ones that talk back and mock you. It’s a _pleasure_ to make them short-circuit and explode.

It makes you bare your teeth in satisfaction when you manage to cut them off midway with your power instead of your weapons.

It’s nice to pull off a well aimed shot but that niceness has nothing on the bone-deep glee that comes from ripping them apart with a vibrosword and even less on the sheer triumph that is to close your fist and see them crumple, knowing your will did it.

They are the best feelings in your life, after curling in bed with the others.

* * *

Twenty-Eight doesn’t care for his hair and he cares even less taking care of it, so he keeps them trimmed so short that they are just a fuzz on his head.

Clone keeps his shaved on the sides, long on top and he lets the long part fall down on the side, which one depending on the day.

Twine’s hair are the longest, all braided up by Clone’s skilled fingers, the tiny braids drawn back and wrapped in a knot at the back of his head.

You keep yours short on the sides but long on top, braided up towards the back of your head and bound tightly with leather strings from where the top of your head down.

Their clothes are tan under-tunics and white tunics, with a large brown belt and white pants. Their faces are kept clean, they are not given anything that might alter their appearance. They are let be who they are.

Though you receive clothes cut the same way as theirs, yours are made from black cloth, with dark red belts to wrap around your middle and blood red wraps for your forearms and hands. Those are the colors that those who use the Dark Side wear, according to historical accounts, and you are of the Dark Side, the Kaminoans never tire to remind you.

You are taught to use liquid black color to put under your eyes in a way that makes Twine squirm in worry, red and gold powder to cover your eyelids and stretch out at the sides of your eyes, like wings. There is a paste to make your lips the same color as the rest of your face. You have to put them on and then use a tiny paintbrush dipped into a jar of gooey blood red liquid to paint the upper lip and only a central line on the lower one.

 _You_ are made to look like the bad one, lest anyone forgets.

* * *

Your eyes sometimes turn red when you use the Force but they don’t turn red every time you do it and they stay blue-green the rest of the time.

“You have to do better, you have to be worse or what use are you going to have?” One of the scientists tell you. You look at their thin neck and imagine wringing it with your hands. You imagine it so strongly that you start curling the fingers you were pressing against your thigh.

The scientist start choking, his colleague panics, someone hits a bottom and makes the alarm start sounding. A sweet, tangy fog fills the room, making you choke on the taste of it in your mouth as your mind shuts down and your eyes close, against your will.

* * *

“That was very nicely done.” Taun We praises you.

There is real food and sweets for you and your others that night, delicacies Clone has read about but none of you have ever had the chance to taste yourselves. You make sure that they eat first and then gorge yourself on what’s left, licking your plate clean when there is no more food to eat.

* * *

The Kaminoans don’t want anymore scientists to be harmed, so they bring animals in front of you and they tell you to choke them like you did with that one scientist.

It’s sweet, innocent looking animals at first. Little things who did nothing to hurt you and that you hide away in the deepest part of your mind, because your others would cry if you let them know what you did to them. It makes you feel shame, to do it and to know that Twine would cry if he knew, that Clone would feel ill. Worse of both those reaction is knowing that Twenty-Eight would understand and forgive you.

Those feeling hurts you and pour fuel on the flame that is your anger. You are the one who chose this, this is your fault and you will do it and you will keep doing it. You will do worse, when they will tell you do worse, and you won’t stop until they tell you to stop. 

It’s wrong, you know this, but it’s more acceptable to you than having the others hurt because you didn’t do it.

The others are weak.

You are strong.

If you are angry with them for it, when it’s not their fault and they couldn’t help being weak, that just shows that you made the right choice, when you made yourself step forward.

You _are_ the bad one.

* * *

They bring the dangerous, bigger beast later on. The one with more than one heart, the ones who are hard to influence with the Force.

Your others are never made to hurt because of you.

* * *

Safe in the knowledge that they have your others in your power, they start having you learn how to hide yourself from others, how to keep from being noticed by your targets, how to wield your power to short out droids against spying units.

When you become good at that, they make you learn how to keep cover while you are using your blasters and how to avoid shorting them so that you can reboot them so that you can slice into their commands and turn them to your will.

* * *

You reach sixteen years of mental development, eight years standard of age, and you are made to track your weapons teacher, follow her around without her noticing.

* * *

She’s a dull Trandoshan, with nothing to make her stand out, who does nothing but train herself and sometimes speak to the image of another Trandoshan, a male. You don’t share that opinion with your handler, but you think it nonetheless.

Then your handler gives you something she says is a translation of the one conversation you reported.

It's one where she’s finalizing her deal with a Hutt called Jabba to procure him untrained younglings strong in the Force. Attractive younglings he could use for his own pleasure as well as have them trained as he prefers.

Younglings.

Untrained.

 _Your others_.

Your vision swims, the duraplast cracking in your hands and then breaking under the pressure of your rage. Your mouth tastes like blood and there is a sweet song of power and death ringing in your ears, murmuring of all the ways he can tear the Trandoshan apart.

When you look up at the handler, she looks serene and detached, as always, one of her long fingers pressing a button, calling a droid to come clean up the shards.

“She is yours to deal with.” She tells you.

Your lips peel back, showing your teeth to her in a smile, and when you get up, you bow your head at her, grateful that she is letting you do this.

* * *

It would be logical to use the Force.

She is the one who taught you about blasters, and even if you went in with the vibroblade she’d have the physical advantage over you.

It is also unimportant that it is logical.

She threatened your others.

You don’t even think about using anything _but_ the Force.

* * *

She tries to talk to you when she sees you out of bonds, tries to raise an alarm when you push her into a wall hard enough to hear some of her ribs crack. The button she pushes works, but no one comes for her.

She tries to talk to you again but you can’t hear her. 

All you hear are the hissing sounds she made when she was talking about selling your others, about taking them away from you.

You are about to rip her open, like the droids you have become so accustomed to, when you feel it, whispering through the Force all the way to your ears. She has brought life into this world, there are younglings that will miss her. She is someone who has others of her own.

If you were someone else, someone softer, it might have made you falter.

But you are yourself, you are your anger and your name is Mad.

The only softness left in you is for your others.

True to that name, you find it maddening that she, who has younglings, would decide to take younglings of another kind and sell them like droid pieces.

It feeds into the pulsating heart of you, dark and brimming with the same power that is pooling in your hands, ready to lash out.

“We are younglings too.” You tell her, despising her for having decided that you are worth less than her own, that your others are only worth as many credits as selling them would bring. 

You _hate_ her, more than you have ever hated anyone who came before, and your hate twists blacker and burrows deeper all the more when she looks at you like _you_ are the monster.

You do rip her apart, from the inside out, and it’s messier than any of the animals you have choked, blood smearing the wall and spraying you too, warm on your skin. Bits and pieces are lying all around and the only thing you feel is even more anger, that she is dead already. That this gives you no real satisfaction.

Usually it’s satisfying. Why is this not satisfying? _Why is_ this _**not** satisfying_?

* * *

The answer comes to you like a warm touch on your cheek, wrapping around you like a warm blanket.

_Because it wasn’t enough._

* * *

When there is nothing left of her body but the fine red mist that is settling all over the hallway, your anger feels more settled, though not by much.

She wasn’t the only one involved into this. The other Trandoshan was too. The Hutt named Jabba was too. 

They know about the others. 

They are a danger to the others.

You want to make them into mist too.

Taun We smiles at you when you tell her so, dipping her head ever so slightly. You think it is approval that you see.

“It is good that you thought to protect us.” She says and you don’t correct her on it. You thought of protecting the others, but if she wants to think that you were protecting the Kaminoans too, she is free to do so.

“We have a mercenary on retain that is taking care of her contact. From the transmissions you recorded, Jabba doesn’t know enough to be a danger and it would make him a danger to try and attack him.” She explains.

It makes you want to grind your teeth together and then set your jaw, to think that someone else is taking care of the other Trandoshan, that this Hutt will go unpunished for participating in the trade, for creating a demand for your others.

“Besides.” Taun We continues, patiently. “You are not powerful enough, to take on a Hutt like him and survive to come back to the others.”

There is no challenge in her tone, she is not demeaning you and you know it, but it hurts to know that all you did, all you learned is still not enough, that you will need to dwelve deeper, do worse. Not because you can’t, but because you are starting to feel like there isn’t a bottom that you might touch one day or another.

You nod, perfunctorily, and let her steer the conversation back to your training and while you listen, you quietly seethe.

Because if you seethe, you don’t despair.

* * *

Your others cluster close to you when you come back, blood cleaned and clothes changes and make-up re-applied. They touch with their soft, uncallused hands, worried for you well-being and they are white and soft in a way that makes you hate them. You love them more than you hate them, hate yourself more than you ever will them.

You are the bad one.

They still love you.

“Your eyes are golden, Mad.” Twenty-Eight whispers, cupping your cheeks in his hands.

You lean your head forward, rest it against his, closing your eyes and breathing in relief.

 _Finally_.

Your others will be safe now.

 _ **Finally**_.

* * *

Imagine.


End file.
